I dropped a lot of time in to Witchfire over the weekend and I like it. I see influences from a lot of games. Souls, Destiny, Elden Ring, Doom, Borderlands and more. It's quite addictive. The gunplay is smooth and feels great.
The player is a hybrid character, with guns and magic, though I don't lean too heavily in to the magic side. Leveling is fast. It uses 'wtichfire' which is a currency not unlike souls, used to upgrade various things, and raise player level.
Game loop is similar to most extraction shooters. Deploy to the raid, shoot stuff, loot stuff and extract to keep it, or die and lose it. You get one shot to reclaim your fallen body and things lost. Combat is satisfying, with 'pods' of enemies spread around the map and you take on each one in turn, whose defeat grants another random arcana, which could be all sorts of things. Faster stamina regen, less stamina loss on hit, burning enemies take more damage, higher health and lots more. So the longer you stay in the raid the stronger you get, but each of these is temporary, applying only to the current raid. Other games do something similar.
Difficulty is handled by a 'gnosis' system, where the player decides when to crank it up. You can level as much as you like, but difficulty only really increases when raising the gnosis level, behind which are locked many of the higher tier weapons, items and spells. So you can grind away at whichever level feels comfortable, and then, when you feel like it's gotten too easy, crank it up another level.
There is a lot more going on here, and I'll get in to it more later. The game play is fun, it runs beautifully on my modest box, looks great and has a good soundscape. Polished early access title that feels more complete than many full release games from big studios. Anyone looking for a fast-paced extraction looter should give Witchfire a go.
